


Operation: Plums

by GingerLocks



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, BAMF Darcy Lewis, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Developing Friendships, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Secret Relationship, on the run/roadtrip, plums
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-06-08 22:54:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6878173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GingerLocks/pseuds/GingerLocks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve gets sent on an important mission to pick up... plums?</p><p>***<br/>"Who are you?"</p><p>“I’m Darcy Lewis.”  She smiled and held out her left hand to him, wiggling her fingers under his nose so he could see the diamond ring sparkling there.</p><p>“I’m Bucky’s fiancé.”<br/>***</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Operation: Recalibration

**Author's Note:**

> This is Civil War compliant, sort of. Inspired by the scene with Bucky buying plums and the end and the mid-credit scene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to [Lara](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lara/pseuds/Lara) for helping me beta!   
> I'm cleaning through this fic and she's being a helpful strawberry! :)

**

“Stevie?” Bucky asked, hesitantly. His suddenly uncertain tone and unexpected use of the old nickname made Steve stop his reading and look up.

Bucky had been adamant about going back in cryo-sleep until Natasha could find out how to properly undo the triggers of his brainwashing. Steve had not wanted to loose his friend so soon after finally finding him again, but it was either this or locking him up and reading Clint’s Russian dictionary out loud, and knocking Bucky out if he was triggered. Safe to say Natasha’s “operation; recalibration” was vetoed.

But short of begging, Steve had done all he could to convince Bucky not to do this, but to no avail.  

Steve looked at Bucky, his friend was shuffling his feet and eyeing the patch covering the metal left on his shoulder before he met his eyes again.

“I’m not changing my mind,” Bucky started, probably seeing the hope in his eyes. “I just, I have a favour to ask.” Bucky stared down at his hand, rubbing his thumb gently between his ring and index fingers.

Steve set the medical files he'd been reading down on the table and walked over to Bucky’s seat.

“Anything,” Steve promised, glancing up at the doctor who approached the room and shook his head, as she wanted to enter. He really didn’t want Bucky to shut himself off again, not after finally asking for something, what he asked for now could not possibly be worse than cryo-freeze. Avoiding interruptions was important.

“On your way back from the prison, could you stop by my building in Bucharest and pick up my… plums?”

Steve blinked. “You jerking me here?” he asked bewildered.

“Nah, Punk” Bucky winced, having heard how stupid his own request had sounded. He shifted his eyes to the door and the doctor waiting there impatiently before he lowered his voice, “s’a code.”

Steve nodded. Leaning closer, pretending to check over the cover on Bucky’s shoulder and angling his head to obscure the view from the door.

“Same building, three floors below mine, third door. Ask for plums.” Bucky said, almost inaudibly, and Steve tapped his shoulder and stood up straight, moving back.

The doctor came into the room then and started fussing over Bucky, making the final checks before he was ready and Bucky settled for smiling at Steve over her shoulder.

“You know you don’t have to do this.” Steve said for the _nth_ time.

“It’s my choice.” Bucky got up gave him a pat on the back, a _thank you_. “Take care,” he said, giving Steve a meaningful glance, making sure he knew that this did not just pertain to him but also to whatever these plums were.

Steve just nodded, feeling like talking would be difficult with a lump in his throat.

 

**

 

“T’Challa has given us permission to reside in his summer home.” Steve informed Sam as they made their way out of the prison, making sure the path was cleared for Clint who was supporting Wanda. “Natasha has the coordinates and she will be taking you there with your gear.”

Sam nodded and took off towards the Quinjet before suddenly stopping and turning towards Steve, who was ushering Scott out of the door.

“Wait, Cap, what do you mean ‘ _you_ ’ and ‘ _your_ ’?” Sam crossed his arms.

“I have an errand to run,” Steve smiled at him before running to the chopper stationed on the helipad, “I’ll meet you there.”

Sam scowled but Steve didn’t give him the chance to run after him, getting the chopper off the ground as soon as he could before zipping off in the opposite direction. Sam’s wings were with Natasha anyway. And Sam had enough sense _not_ to jump without a parachute. He could see the Quinjet take off in the distance behind him as he made it for the mainland.

 

**

 

He scoped out the building for three days before he learned the routines of the cops stationed outside of it, waiting, as if The Winter Soldier to return for his spatulas and favorite coffee cup.

After that it was easy to break in.

He made his way quickly to the apartment Bucky had directed him to and knocked four times. There was no answer.

He tried again, and again, and on the fourth try, as his window of opportunity was getting smaller and he was debating just kicking the door in, he finally heard shuffling on the other side.

The door opened and a pretty little woman with big blue eyes and a birds nest of dark hair opened the door.

“ _Da?_ _Ce vrei?_ ”  She asked in butchered Romanian.

“ _Prună_?” Steve asked hesitantly in an equally butchered Romanian and glanced at the floor number again to see if he might have knocked on the wrong apartment.

She narrowed her eyes at him “Plum?”

“Yeah,” Steve said, noting her American accent and switched to English as well, before he slid both his hoodie and beanie off his head and removed his sunglasses. She sighed and opened the door wider.

“Come on in, Cap.” She gestured to her tiny space, which looked much better that the identical room Bucky'd been living in upstairs. “I swear I am usually more perceptive, but it’s like three in the morning and I was too tired to find my glasses.”

She goes over to the corner of the room where a big double bed takes up most of the space and digs out a phone and a hair tie. “Want some coffee?”

She gestures to her brightly painted kitchen and puts her hair up.

“No. Thank you.” He hesitates as the woman strips out of her pyjama trousers, exposing pale thighs and a scar going from her knee to her mid calf.

“I fell.” She tells him when she catches his ogling, and pulls on a pair of skinny jeans before turning her back and putting on a sports bra under her big tee.

“Ah, er.” Steve glances to the floor, suddenly bashful after glimpsing naked waist and the side of her breast. She was pretty, with curves for days and big lips, but he really wasn’t here for that. He was here for “the, ehm, the plums?”

“Chill, you’re getting it.” she waved at him as she pulled on a hoodie, then a leather jacket and zipped it up.

"You sure you don't want any coffee?" she asked again, he nodded. "Rats! I was gonna have you make it for the both of us..." she mumbled as she started throwing various items on her bed and getting a small over-the-shoulder bag to stuff it in.

“I don't function well before coffee, so your timing really is terrible. I reckon we got about three more minutes before the next shift starts patrolling. Oh! There’s a loose floorboard under the plant, mind moving it?” She nodded at the huge flowerpot with a tiny, green sprout. He nodded and lifted it up and off and easily found the hiding space. He’d grown up during the prohibition, and spotting a place like this was easy even before he could see colour.

Inside was a backpack and a small safety deposit box that he retrieved and set on her counter.

“Thanks,” she muttered and put her glasses on, having found them under her bed after tying her boots.

She opened the box and cleaned out the passports and money in there, shoving that into her small bag too, and then stuck her hand in the plant dirt and dug out a big plastic bag with various weapons. “Take the backpack.” she told him and he put it on without question. Mostly because he didn’t know which to ask first.

She washed her hands of dirt and stuffed the guns and knives on her person and pulled her hood up, stuffing the pepperspray in one boot and taser in the other. 

Steve suddenly felt naked. He hadn’t brought his shield. It was probably with Tony, or maybe even General Ross. And though he doubted this woman could take him down, the way she handled the weapons with such ease was unsettling.

As she had predicted she was good and ready in less than three minutes, and where she had looked like Wanda on Sunday mornings when she opened the door, she now looked like Natasha  undercover (and under radar).

“Let’s go.” She nodded to her window and took one last look at the room before opening it and gesturing for him to follow her out.

Once they made it to the ground through a series of jumps and small iron pegs hammered to the side of the building, they made it for the car he had parked three blocks away.

“Where are you taking me?” The woman asked as she put her seatbelt on.

Steve blinked at her. Confused.

"What?" she asked.

“What?” He asked at the same time. He thought she was taking him to whatever these Plums was...

She pushed her glasses firmly up on her nose and took in his expression before rolling her eyes.

 _“I’m_ the Plum, stupid. _Jesus_ I thought you were supposed to be smart and shit. _He_ told me you were smart and shit!” She laughed, “then again, his memory is like swiss cheese on his better days…”

Steve started the car and drove to the extraction point, frowning at the way she joked about him. Like she knew Bucky, like his brainwashing was _funny_ to her.

“Who _are_ you?” he asked through clenched teeth.

“Oh, yeah, he probably didn’t tell you. Paranoid as fuck, I’m telling you… I'm nice like that. You'll see, I'll tell you things.” She chattered away, ignoring the tension rolling off of him. “That safety-nerd… Always making me take different routes home and ingraining my getaway to be under three minutes, and I can’t count the times he popped up out of nowhere or melted away into the shadows because he didn’t want people to see us together.”

Steve shot her a look, wanting her to get to the point.

“Yeah, sorry, I know I talk too much.” She shrugged unapologetically.

“I’m Darcy Lewis.”  She smiled and held out her left hand to him, wiggling her fingers under his nose so he could see the diamond ring sparkling there.

“I’m Bucky’s fiancé.”

 

**

 


	2. Operation: Moaning, meeting and murder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Darcy met James and Steve's struggle to believe that Bucky Barnes is settling down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh wow I am positively overwhelmed with the response I got, thank you! In my old fandom I got 3% of the response for a full fic, 10x as long and I haven't quite gotten used to all the kudos and comments that come with this pairing. Thank you! 
> 
> A lot happened in the 4 days since I last posted. I've been allergic, sunburned and sleep-deprived (triple threat!) may our weekends be better!

“Bucky’s fiancé?” Steve asked, parking the car along the side of the street after 30 minutes of driving.

“Yeah, for the last three months or so.” She smiled back and exited the car, strolling over to the next car and pulling out a thin metal rod to pick the lock. 

Steve did not know where she pulled it from, but he suspected she’d been hiding it in her sleeve. 

He wiped over the steering wheel with his own sleeve, did the same to the door handles, and pulled the backpack out of the backseat before he followed her.

 

 

******

 

 _It was hot, too hot. Darcy knew it was going to be hot, being late summer in_ Firenze _, but Jesus she was sweating._

_And hungry._

_She looked around for the little restaurant recommended by the sweet lady who owned the apartment she’d found on airbnb._

_She finally found it, after another hour of walking. Thankfully the sun had set and the sunburn she’d gotten in Rome two weeks ago had finally faded from boiled-lobster-red to a faint tan. She wished there was a little more payoff, but the gods didn’t bless her with the pigments for it._

_The restaurant was small and cosy, with tiny tables littered all over. Half the room was full of people, having a nice time and eating together, except for one guy, sitting quietly in the corner, just looking at the room. She observed him, the obvious bulge of muscle under his jacket, the strong chin halfway hidden behind his stubble, and made her way to the table next to his, sitting right next to him, with her back to the wall and people-watched as well._

**  


The extraction point was a bust. Too many uniforms patrolling. But Darcy and Steve hid in a laundromat for an hour just in case. They missed their window though, so when it started nearing 8 AM Darcy called it and threw a kit-kat at him.

“Thanks?” He said, actually feeling pretty starved.

“No worries, I know how Bucky is without regular sugar-intake, you might be worse. What do I know though, you might not need to snack on snickers, plums and fried chicken at 3 AM” She rattled on as she made her way to another car, slipping the jimmy out of her sleeve.

Steve tried not to bristle at her casual reminders of her and Bucky’s domesticity. But it did bother him. He felt incredibly peeved that she had been in Bucky's life for the past two years while he and Sam were searching all over for him.

“Bucky’s fiancé?” Steve asked, voice low, mostly to himself.

She rolled her eyes and jimmied the door open, “I’m driving.”

**

_This pasta was the best pasta she’d ever had in her life. It was the least to be expected, she was in Italy after all, but nothing could have prepared her for just how good it was._

_She moaned around another mouthful, getting a startled look from the man sitting at the table next to her. She just shrugged, pointed at her pasta and mimed good since she could not for the life of her remember if it was_ ‘bueno’ _or_ ‘bien’... _maybe_ 'dolce'?

_The man looked back down at his own plate, picking at his carbonara._

_She took a sip of wine and then shoved another mouthful of pasta into her mouth._

_“Oh my God, that's good” she moaned. The waiter had been right, the wine really did go well with this dish._ _She might have moaned a little bit more before she looked up again. The man was still staring at her._

 _“_ Scusi, _” she apologised and raised her glass in a toast to him._

 _He smiled faintly at her before his brows furrowed and he hesitantly raised his own glass in return. She swallowed and smiled slowly at him, he smirked faintly in return._ Goddamn _that smile was dangerous._

_“It’s a good thing you’re Italian, because without the language barrier, you could be trouble.” She mumbled and sipped her wine, smirking herself, and giving him a last long look before returning to her food._

_“Sorry to disappoint,” the man said in a deep voice. Deep and_ American _voice, shocking Darcy to her core and sending a tingling down her spine... though that might have more to do with his voice than the American-ness of it. She whipped her head up and gaped at him._

_“I’m from Brooklyn,” he grinned at her._

_“Well, fuck me!” Darcy muttered, the man laughed, a short huff of air that seemed to surprise him. To his credit though, he didn’t make any promises about fucking her later. She’d met enough of those men. Those who knew just how good looking they were and didn’t expect to have to bring anything else to the table (read; in bed)._

_She regarded him thoughtfully, wondering just how much she would mind the trouble he’d clearly bring... especially to_ the table ( _again, read: in bed)._

_He was dressed in layers, even in the Italian summer heat. She herself was stripped down to a tee and shorts, and still kind of sweating. Her hair was up and off her clammy neck, whilst his was down and covered by a cap. She wondered if he was a backpacker like her, or maybe on the run?_

_She met his eyes again, and there was something there, something hidden deep, hidden behind his uncertainty. She made up her mind._

_“This food is really good,” she gestured to her half-full plate, “you want some?”_

_He suddenly looked guarded, she could see him eye her, eye the food, look for the trap. A little paranoid then._

_“I swear I’m not screwing with you here, you get to have some of this pesto deliciousness, but only if i get some of that creamy goodness of yours.”_

_They looked at each other for a second before he fully smirked, and opened his mouth, “so, creamy good-”_

_“Dear God, I was talking about your carbonara, get your mind out of the gutter.” She laughed and picked up her plate and glass, moving to the chair opposite him. He held up his own plate in exchange for hers._

_She took one bite and moaned again, closing her eyes to enjoy the creamy goodness. And speaking of goodness…_

_“Not that I don’t mind visiting that gutter with you later on.” She winked at him, before sipping her wine. It did not go as well with the carbonara as it did with the pesto._

_“Looking forwards to it, doll.” He smiled bashfully before taking a bit of her pasta and moaning exaggeratedly, eyes sparkling with mirth._

_She laughed and kicked him under the table._

_Trouble indeed._

 

**

 

“Fiancé?” Steve asked again for the 6th time since they passed the Bulgarian border.

Darcy didn’t even bother rolling her eyes at him this time, but simply flipped a page in her atlas of Europe, a big dog eared monstrosity that took up most of her over-the-shoulder bag   and continued mapping their route to _İpsala_ , Turkey.

Steve still waited for her to tell him that she was joking, that she was playing a prank on him -albeit an incredibly elaborate one- that any moment she would give and tell him she was just the lady who picked up his mail or watered his plants.

Except Bucky didn’t have any plants… and who would send him mail? Holiday letters from Hydra? Steve snorted.

“What?” Darcy asked him, side-eyeing him over the top of her glasses.

“Nothing,” Steve stuttered, keeping his eyes on the road, “I just can’t really believe Bucky got engaged...”

The atlas came down.

“Look, Cap, just because he hasn’t had any contact with you for the past two years doesn’t mean he has been a lonely hermit either.  Like I said, his memory is not the greatest,  but just because he can’t remember being a ladies man, don’t mean he ain’t still got it! I mean one meal together at a restaurant in _Firenze_ and I had already fallen for his charms and off-the-charts-paranoia!” She laughed and glanced back at her atlas, “oh, and take the next right. We need to ditch the car.”

Steve stayed quiet, once again processing. Processing like he’d been doing since he met her.

**

 

_Mr. Trouble turned out to be a man named James. And James was an excellent dinner companion. A little quiet, a little drawn, but he seemed earnestly interested. He didn’t talk too much about himself, but Darcy is an always will be a chatterbox, so she did not mind in the slightest that he let her feed her own narcissistic appetite._

_She talked a little about where she was from, how a country girl got good with computers, how she escaped to Cul_ _ver, the time she was almost arrested for hacking the local PD but managed to get out of it by hacking it again. She talked about traveling. How she  loved it, how she didn’t mind in the slightest when her internship brought her to New Mexico, to Norway, or London._

_He was not completely quiet though. He asked her about her travels, asked her for the details, encouraged her whenever she paused, out of habit, to check if she was boring him. He smiled the first time and assured her she wasn’t. She swore to herself that she would make him smile just like that as many times as she could during this evening._

_The food was finished within ten minutes, ten minutes followed by three hours and a new bottle of wine, and with her going on and on about everything._

_Well, not everything-everything. _Not Shield, nor Thor, nor Doctor Jane Foster.__

_The Shieldra-thing that had hit the fan in late March. Shieldra and the Twitter-trending datadump with her name on it._

_So she’d rather… paraphrased it, but it was not as if she was really lying. Se had always been a talented storyteller. Once she made Thor into a Norwegian athlete on a bender in New Mexico where he fell in love with her Boss who worked at a planetarium, well, everything sort of folded itself out right after that._

_She focused more on the past few months. Her three months of backpacking with Jane from the Nevada desert, up to Seattle and down across to Florida._

_Then Jane had been skirted off to Åsgard (“visited Thor’s parents in Norway”) and Darcy had been left alone, with only her Taser and great packing skills, to fend for herself. She turned down a job with Stark Industries in favour of travelling. Only crashing with her Shield-Buddy (the only good thing to come out of the NDA’s) for a month before taking on Europe._

_Her packing skills really were great though. She could fit a week’s worth of clothes in her backpack and still have enough space left over for a few laptops and a telescope._

_“The trick is all in the socks,” she tapped her nose and winked over the brim of her wineglass. “Trust me.”_

_“I thought it was all about the backpack,” he reminded her, and she vaguely remembered making that point while the wine bottle had still been full, but waved it off._

_“It’s a combination of things though,” she smiled, bumping her foot against his._

_“I bet it is,” he agreed and bumped his foot back against hers, leaving it there. She didn't mind the extra heat at all._

 

**

 

They ran into a little problem at the border between Turkey and Bulgaria. Someone had recognized him and he had to make a run for it.

“Just go, I got this.” Darcy had said and shoved a slip of paper into his pocket while fishing out a tiny laptop from her bag.

“ _Go_!”

He was a few miles away, having long since outran the guards and avoided their vehicles when he stopped.

“Fuck.” he cursed to himself. He had to go back for Darcy. Picking out the note from his pocket he read her message and frowned.

He read it again.

And once more.

“How the-?”

He crumpled up the note again and started a light jog towards the coordinates on the slip of paper.

Three hours later he entered the remote house, obviously a safe house, at the coordinates she’d given him. Walking in the back door to find Darcy sitting at the kitchen counter with a laptop open and a small flask and two tumblers set up on the table between them.

“How was your run?” she asked brightly, only looking away from the screen for a second.

“Long,” he grumbled and sat down. “How did you get here?”

“Easy,” she sighed and nodded to her screen. “I hacked into the immigration database and was deported to Turkey.”  She threw a Turkish passport with her picture on the table.

“They didn’t detain you for harbouring a fugitive?” he asked her skeptically.

“Nah, told them you jumped into my car right around the corner. Managed to cut the feed to the camera there at the right time before they took me, they believed me and I think they were just a little overwhelmed with all the suits that showed up. I slipped out, no problem. Clearing our tracks as best as I can now though.” She waved at her screen, he caught her hand.

Her knuckles were pink and slightly swollen, and she had budding bruises around her wrists. He raised his eyebrows at her.

“Okay, I punched my way out, _then_ ran for it, but didn’t even have to use my gun. And I was lucky enough to find a truck going in the right direction and dove into the back of it. All of it was luck. I even managed to keep my go-bag!”

Steve let go of her hand and didn’t say anything, but he was impressed. Then again, if Bucky really had been with this girl for the past two years, then she must be good at evading capture.

She took a break from her typing and filled a tumbler.

“Plum Brandy?” she offered and he accepted the tumbler numbly as she filled one for herself.

“ _Sănătate._ ” She clinks her tumbler with his and he chuckles.

“Your Romanian really is horrible.”

“Ugh, I know, he tried to teach me, but I’m just too _obnoxious_ and _American_ to manage the accents. He’s lucky I can order from bakeries in eight languages, especially with the way his cravings for baked goods are.” She shrugs and downs the brandy.

Steve drinks his, it’s not too bad. “I’ll see if I can find some ice for you hand,” he says and gets up.

“Thanks, Cap!”

The typing continues.

**

_James insisted on following her home to her airbnb. Usually she did not, at all, under any circumstances, allow men to see where she lived and come there with her alone. No, she was not stupid._

_But James made her feel safe in a way only Thor had before. She didn’t quite know if it was his big, hunky, muscled physique, or if it was the way he carried himself. Walking so gracefully, with such purpose. Strutting._

_He did make odd choices though. Taking alleys where there were perfectly nice streets they could have chosen, always avoiding people and looking down whenever there was a CCTV camera around._

_Although she had to concede that the fellas that made her feel safe did have one common denominator, when four jackbooted thugs stormed out of the van James had been eyeing, with guns and yells._

_She barely got her mace out of her purse before she heard four shots ring out. She scrambled with the little canister as she looked up and saw all four lying on the ground, dead, James above them with a gun in hand._

“W _hat the_ fuck _, James!” she whisper-shouted. “Why?”_

_James picked up one of the thugs with his left hand like he weighed nothing and threw him with superhuman force into the back of the van, eight feet away._

_“Hydra,” he muttered. And threw the next one over his shoulder before dragging the third by the arm to the van._

_Darcy looked around and saw there were no people in the vicinity, but decided not to risk getting caught with four bodies and a mutant(?) on the run and did the most logical thing she could think of._

_“What are-?” James asked her when he turned around and found her carrying the last thug in a fireman’s carry._

_“Helping you,” she panted, “shut up.”_

_He took the last body off of her and pulled a hand grenade from his belt._

_“Stop!” She told him, hand landing on his as he was about to pull the pin._

_He stopped, his hand freezing under hers and she took one second accept the fact that the hand was metal._

_“They have tech-gear in the back there, give me four minutes with one of their computers and I can erase the footage from the CCTV camera in front of the ATM.” She waved her hand at the camera in question and he stared intently at her, eyes stormy, searching her face for something, reading her for a few seconds. All the while his hand held firmly onto the pin._

_“Please.”_

_She waited another few seconds before he nodded and put the hand grenade down._

_“Thank you,” she jumped into the back of the van and avoided stepping on the bodies heaped up on the floor._

_The computer was already up and running and she could see the feed from all the cameras they were tapped into, on the feed she could see James hit out the lens in three of them as she worked. She waited until he’d struck all of them out before she started erasing. While she went through their recent files on the desktop  she saw her own picture and Shield file up on one of the other monitors, and did her best not to think about it as she remotely erased the CCTV servers and backups while the red letters_ “PRIORITY 3” _blinked at her from her file._

_“You good?” he asked her, after four minutes on the dot._

_“Yeah, two sex, I mean_ sec _,” she mumbled and hit F5 twice. “There, now we better do like the hockey and get the puck outta here!”_

_She met his eyes again, much calmer now than they had been five minutes ago, nodded and left the van. He pulled the pin out of the hand grenade and lopped it into the van as she passed him, shutting the door behind her._

_“Run,” he muttered, and Darcy hadn't survived two alien invasions by arguing over such sage advice._

_They made it to the corner by the time the van blew up._

_“Shiiit!” she breathed, wanting to look back, but being stopped by James who dragged her into a night club across the street._

_The music was loud and the bass was almost as loud as the explosion outside, no one inside seemed to have reacted and Darcy wondered how. She could still feel the ringing in her ears and the adrenaline pumping through her body._

_James took one look at her face and brought her to the bathroom in the back, the bright fluorescent lights a big contrast to the club lighting and the night outside._

_“We safe for now?” she asked him, feeling her chest tighten._

_“For now,” he nodded, helping her down to sit on the closed toilet seat._

_“Good, I need minute,” she muttered before the panic seized her._

_He sat with her for ten minutes in that little bathroom with the too bright lights and helped her breath through it. But afterwards she felt faint._

_“They were after me,” she muttered, “m’priority three.”_

_“I know. I found you first.” he said calmly. “I’ll help you somewhere safe. Then-”_

_“Shhhh..” She told him, laying her hand over his mouth, “get me safe so I can sleep for the next 12 hours, then we’ll take it from there.”_

_“You should run kicking and screaming away from me,” he muttered as he helped her up, sounding mystified at her odd trust in him._

_“Nah, I know you’re a good man, Sergeant Barnes,” she muttered and splashed some cold water on her face in front of the broken mirror over the sink._

_She dried off with a paper towel and saw his face in the reflection. He looked stunned, scared and a little jittery._

_“Come now, James,” she rolled her eyes and turned to face him, resting her hip against the sink, “the arm is a dead giveaway.”_

_He nodded, suddenly as quiet and hesitant has he was at the beginning of the evening._

_“So, you doing some soul-search-traveling as well?” She asked casually, as if she hadn’t just helped him cover up four murders. He frowned at her, obviously still stuck on the four murders part._

_“How about you talk some more about yourself next time we eat, huh? Now that I know who you are.” She smiled at him and he looked perplexed at her offer. At her wanting to talk and eat and spend time with him after this._

_“Say, what do you think about Nice?” She asked with bated breath._

_“France is_ nice _this time of year.” He said slowly at her, face guarded like she’d laugh at him for agreeing to this, like she was yanking his chain. Like he was a dog who didn’t know whether he would receive a treat or be sprayed with water, or maybe even electrocuted by those horrible collars._

 _“I’d say it’s very…_ Nice _.” she laughed and he smiled at her again, a real smile, like he’d gotten the best treat of them all. She was pretty certain he’d had the same conclusion about her as she’d had about him._

 

_Boy were they a world of trouble, but think of all the fun they would have causing it together..._

 

**

 

“So, engaged to be _married?_ _Bucky Barnes_ is settling down?” Steve asked again, ” _Now_?”

“I swear to God, I will hit you, Cap. In the face... With the Taser.”

“Right,” Steve nodded and rubbed his eyes, the past days were finally getting to him.

She sighed next to him and closed her laptop.

“Take a Cap-Nap, ETD is in a little over five hours, I’ll wake you in four.” She smiled kindly at him, nodding to the couch in the corner.

Suddenly he could see it. The reason for Bucky’s proposal. This girl had a helluva lot of moxy, but she was also considerate and kind beneath the brash exterior.

He was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt… _tomorrow_. He yawned and walked over to the sofa, sleep taking him almost before he hit the pillow.

Tomorrow, he’d give her a second chance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit longer (like twice as long) as the last chapter, I didn't feel right splitting it. 
> 
> I got a lot of meetings this weekend and a lot of traveling, but I'll update when I get the time. :)
> 
> Thank you to [Lara](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lara/pseuds/Lara) for helping me beta!  
> 


	3. Operation: Falafel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Darcy get the hell outta Dodge, Darcy gets hungry and Natasha can raise one eyebrow at a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is so late. I mentioned some meeting I had to go to over a month ago, well they resulted in a job! Anyway the job is done now so lets get to writing!
> 
> Thank you to [Lara](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lara/pseuds/Lara) for helping me beta!  
> 

**

_He let her into his tiny home. A microscopic studio apartment with only a curtain separating the bathroom and kitchenette. It was stripped, almost no furniture but for an air mattress and a chair._

_He looks over her shaky form and his eyes linger for a moment on her elbow, before he hands her a shirt and gestures to the bathroom, holding the curtain back for her. She enters it and glances at herself in the small mirror. She checks her elbow and sees where the Hydra agent’s blood soaked through on the inside of her arm. Making a dark spot on her bright cardigan. She looks up at James and sees him studying her feet._

_“It’s us or them.” He said, dropping the curtain._

_Us or them._

_She looked at the blood on her arm and back at her reflection. Her face was a little pale, despite her tan, other than that she looked the same. Deciding not to dwell on it she stripped off her clothes down to her bra and panties, scrubbed her arm and hands clean and slipped his shirt over her head and walked back into the room._

_“Thank you.” She told him._

_She’s out cold the moment she’d slipped under the covers. For some reason, being here with James, (Bucky, Sergeant Barnes, the goddamn Winter Soldier) made her feel safer than she had in the past two years. It was surreal, illogical and completely insane. _

_Insane in the membrane._

_But when she had showered and dressed in what she thought might be his favourite shirt, judging by the wear and tear on the left arm, she’d felt fuzzy and calm and warm and simply curled up on the inflatable mattress that took up most of his tiny living room._

_The last thing she sees is James standing at the kitchenette, stirring something in a tiny saucepan._

_She dreams of chicken soup._

 

***

 

“So, how did you, and Bucky? How did you end up..?”

“How did I end up being Bucky’s fiancé?” Darcy asked with a smirk on her lips. She’d banned him from saying the word ‘fiancé’ for the remainder of their trip to Wakanda.

“Yeah.”

“No big deal. I did what any woman would and tampered with the birth control,” she winked at him. His eyes widened and dropped to her stomach but it was flat. A little pudgy, but still too flat for her to be in the family way.

He looked back up to her face and saw the shit eating grin there, it was as if Bucky had taught her exactly how to smile like that. She cackled with mirth at his expression and feigned wiping a tear from the corner of her eye, muttering something about ‘classic.’

“Nah. But when you spend the past two years with only each other, it’s easy to get close.  All the high-stress situations, isolation from other friends, having to constantly have each other’s backs… It’s psychology one-oh-one. Making out like horny teens was bound to happen from the get-go” She smiled down at her left hand, face all dopey, and Steve looked away. They were sitting on a rock a few feet from a clearing where Nat said she’d pick him up. The cool night breeze a relief from the muggy heat of the day.

“Seriously though, it’s not like he asked me.” She regained his attention. “I mean. I think he wanted to ask. Because sometimes he got this look. After three months of that look I just asked him if he wanted to marry me and that was that. Well... He was a bit prissy about it. Super grumpy for not letting him be the one to pop the question.”

Steve could imagine. Bucky had always been a ladies man, a ‘ _playah_ ’, as Sam had called him after hearing the stories. But Mr. and Mrs. Barnes’ story of true love and cheesy romance had always given Bucky a little spark of longing in his eyes. Maybe that was why he dated so much? Because he was looking for that one girl who would make his heart melt and make him lose his head. And maybe he ran through so many girls because he was depending on that feeling being instant. That fool. Perhaps being with Darcy for so long was all it took, maybe he could have been married back in the 40’s if he’d just stuck around for one girl a little longer.

They sat there in silence, it was a testament to how tired Darcy was that she wasn’t keeping up a steady stream of chatter. He listened to the cars driving on the road a few miles away, glanced at his watch and realised he only had a few more minutes left alone with Darcy before Nat would be present.

“So how did you get the ring?” Steve asked after a long silence.

She blinked at him tiredly and smiled faintly.

“He took me out to dinner and gave me this whole speech. He didn’t make a big deal out of it, we were out in public, but he wanted to do it right.” She rolled her eyes fondly. “He kept repeating how he wanted to do things right. When we got home he got down on one knee and slipped the rock on my finger. I told him that if it was that important to him that we did things right, then he could go ahead and sleep on his air mattress in the other apartment and stop living in sin.” She winked at him “we sinned like 4 times that night if you get what I mean.”

Steve felt his ears go pink and grunted. He remembered when Bucky, drunk like a sailor, had brought girls home to their apartment. He’d been half asleep most times and listened to the whispers and kisses and warning about waking him. When Bucky’s bed had started thumping against their shared wall, he’d rolled his eyes and slipped the pillow over his head. But it was never enough to block out the sounds the girls made as they were passed caring about noise levels. Yeah. He got what Darcy meant.

Thankfully the arrival of the chopper saved him from having to answer her.

_***_

_She woke up with a feeling that something important had happened. For a split second she took in the blurry view of a kitchenette and a brown raggy blanket and drew the conclusion that she had gone home with the Handsome American. Another second and the smell of coffee was all she needed to remember that, yes, she had indeed gone home with him, but the aches in her body were not from a one night stand._

_They were from carrying a dead man down the road and walking all day._

_She shut her eyes and forced the memories out of her head. Easier said than done. But she still took a few seconds to try to file it away in the ‘aliens and asskicking’ folder and neatly shut it._

_It made her feel better even if she could still see his face, feel this body, still warm, against her shoulder. But the image of her own face with 'PRIORITY 3’ written above it made her feel a lot calmer._

Us or them.

_“Coffee?” James asks her and she glances up. He’s standing there with a cup awkwardly held out to her. The easy air he’d had last night is completely gone. Probably because she knew who he was now._

_She stood and accepted it, smiling at him as she sat on his windowsill. Sighing in pleasure as she sipped her coffee, he leaned against the counter and gestured to the corner of the room._

_“I went by and got your things. I’ll help you get back to people you trust. People you know aren’t Hydra, but it’s going to take a while.”_ 'since we’re both on the run.' 

_She looked out the window and thought about everything that happened last night, about how safe she felt._

_“Good. You promised me Nice.” She winked. He smiled faintly and scratched the back of his neck, damn he looked good._

_She glanced at his stove and smiled conspiratorially to him. “I might not function without coffee, but you ate a whole can of chicken soup after I fell asleep.” She nodded behind her to the street outside, “Wanna get breakfast at that cute little bakery over there?”_

***

Natasha didn’t say a single word the entire ride and neither did Darcy. Sure Darcy didn’t have a microphone on her headphones, and he had forgone wearing any, but still. After almost two days of chatter he was expecting more noise from her, all he heard was an occasional sigh, and he realised she was sleeping. Nat on the other hand was having a long monologue with looks and eyebrows alone that Steve didn’t want to even start deciphering.

They landed in Egypt to switch to the quinjet, their final stop before Wakanda, when Darcy finally spoke.

“Falafels!”

Nat paused and raised an eyebrow at him over Darcy’s head.

“Sorry?” Steve asked.

“The last flight to Waka Waka will take less than three hours, so I’m getting like five big portions to go from that vendor over there and bringing them with me. Sure they’ll get cold but they’ll still taste the same, Bucky won’t mind.” She smiled brightly at him and started digging through her bag for the right currency. Steve felt his stomach fall and churn and he glanced at Natasha who now had both eyebrows raised at him. “She knows Bucky.” Nat stated, and looking back to Darcy, now talking with massive hand gestures to the vendor. Steve nodded, “they’re engaged,” he murmured.

Natasha’s hair whipped as she looked back to him, searching his face.

“And you didn’t tell her?” Natasha looked annoyed and Steve got on the defensive.

“Well, I don’t know her, for all I knew she could be…” he trailed off at the look on Natasha’s face.

“What? A Hydra mole?” She rolled her eyes and Steve sighed, but remained quiet.

“She knows Clint,” Natasha told him as Darcy handed over her money, Steve frowned.

“She is all over the files- well she used to be, I think she erased herself, she did a pretty great job of it too. She might be the reason why we had so much trouble tracking Barnes down.” She shrugged and turned towards the abandoned warehouse where the quinjet was hidden as Darcy made her way back to them.

“She’s also friends with Thor, and Dr. Selvig regards her as a niece, maybe even a daughter.”

Natasha threw him a last threatening look over her shoulder, making it clear that he needed to deal with his issues.

He sighed, knowing she was right.

“You want a falafel? They’re great! I got some for you and Natasha,” Darcy smiled and held out a big styrofoam container that smelled amazing. He took it and smiled as she started going on and on about Bucky’s obsession with food, and how she did not mind her future hubby being on the chubby side as long as he was happy.

_As long as he’s happy._

Steve felt sick to his stomach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed this chapter! I am overwhelmed by all the response I got to this fic! Thank you! <3


	4. Operation: Caffeination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy gets her politics on, eats falafel and goes apeshit on Steve's ass. 
> 
> T'Challa likes Ethiopian coffee. 
> 
> Bucky makes coffee, and eats... a lot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not knowledgeable in everything, but I do use google to research a couple of facts. Like "Italian breakfast" and "Wakanda location"  
> Please excuse any mistakes and ignorant statements and comments, and please be gentle if/when you point them out!!
> 
> Thank you to [Lara](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lara/pseuds/Lara) for helping me beta!  
> (check out her fics yo!)

***

 

Natasha leaves them the moment they land, just flies the Quinjet away as Darcy unstraps her weapons. She doesn’t even complain as she is far too busy marveling at the nature surrounding them, he notices that she doesn’t touch her boots where he knows her taser and pepper spray lives. Nobody asks her to take her boots off and he doesn’t say anything. He can see that they are all calmed by her appearance. He would have been too if their first meeting hadn’t been mostly made up of her strapping weapons to her body and getting ready for undercover with Natasha-like efficiency.

But unstrapping them made her seem like she was just holding them for someone else. Her wide eyes shining with childlike wonder and mouth agape, much like Bucky at the World Fair back in 1943.

And her mouth kept going like there was no tomorrow. Assuring everyone that she didn’t typically like nature, but would have to make an exception for Wakanda's beauty.

The chatter kept up, even though no-one answered her, Steve thought maybe it was a nervous tic. She’d done the same in the car, after the adrenaline of their getaway had run out and Darcy was no longer needed to be in control, she’d started chatting away. Only being distracted by multitasking, something she claims to be horrible at, but even Steve knew that wasn’t true.

They turned a corner and Darcy fell silent when she saw who was at the end of the large room.

“Steve Rogers, back again so soon?” T’Challa greeted him before turning his head to her, smiling like they were both part of some big secret, “and Darcy Lewis. I’ve heard about you.”

“Oh, er, really? Because, dude, I- I mean, your majesty,” Darcy almost tripped over her own feet as she tried to both curtsey and back up at the same time, Steve grabbed the strap of her bag before her face met the floor.

She stood straight and sighed, Steve heard her muttering a couple of curse words under her breath and could practically feel the heat from her blushing face from three feet away.

“King T’Challa, do you want some cold and soggy falafel from Egypt?” Darcy asked, holding out the plastic bag like she was a knight swearing their sword to their king.

“I would not mind a taste.” He smiled. 

“Great, I got a few portions," Darcy smiled in relief, Steve saw her shoulders sag a little, and knew she was loosening up. "Knowing Bucky he’d eat the whole bag unless I stopped him,” she continued, offhandedly. "Where is he by bee tee dubs?"

T’Challa stopped smiling and looked over at Steve, it was clear he had questions about why Bucky was important to this woman, and if she was so familiar with him, why did she not know?

"He is resting. You will see him later." T'Challa answered, looking back at Darcy again with greater interest. 

Steve kept asking himself that too. Why he kept pushing off telling Darcy. Why he was waiting for the right moment.

Because he knew the _right_ moment was never going to come.

 

***

 

_James stood in front of the pastry selection for three whole minutes before she took pity on him and ordered for both._

_“Er... quattro?” She held up four fingers questioningly to the man behind the counter who smiled and nodded. “Great, quattro cornetto semplice, per favore,_ _e due cappuccino!”_ _She ordered, then she pointed at this other pastry that looked even better than the croissants and again showed four fingers, getting another nod from the smiling man behind the counter. She accepted the tray overfilled with pastries and tipped generously._

_She hesitantly reached out and nudged James’ elbow, getting his attention, before leading him to a table close by. He slipped his arm around hers and easily redirected them to the table in the corner, close to the back entrance and offering a view of the whole cafe._

_ Right, he was paranoid. He had every right to be… and so did she, come to think of it. Especially since it was  _ her _ Hydra had come for last night. She drew a deep breath through her nose and rolled her shoulder, still feeling the weight of the man she’d carried. _

_ James watched the movement before searching her face with his big blue eyes, making her look away, lest she start blushing. Like a thirteen year old kid with a crush. _

_ “You sure you needed another cup of coffee?” He asked, after taking in her twitching and fidgeting. _

_“Yeah, no, yeah. It’s just a lot has happened to me, well, not to me. I have been through a lot of shit okay? And I sorta said goodbye to that shit a few months ago and I just realised that I can probably never let go of that life for good. You get it, right?”_

_He nodded, looking at his plate and folding his hands in his lap. Shit, she should probably be more sensitive, use what little filter she had._

_“So, what do you think of your croissant?” She nodded to his uneaten plate. He smiled faintly and picked up one of the pastries, sniffing it before taking a nibble from the corner. He chewed slowly before he swallowed._

_“S’good.” He muttered before eating the rest in two bites._

_S he’d bought too much for each and meant to save half of it for a snack on the road trip. But James ate all his, plus her extra. She got it, she’d seen Thor eat, and heard the tales from Selvig about how much Captain America ate. James was almost the same size as his WW2 BFF, and Hydra must have done something with his biology, seeing as he was still here, and not 90 years old. _

_He smiled shyly and sipped the rest of his cold coffee, turning his head to people watch. She let herself stare at him, taking in every stubble and scar, the miniscule way his face moved, just like he had with her. Her eyes lingered at his lips, imagining touching them with her own, and missed her mouth with the last piece of jam covered croissant._

_He met her eyes and smirked at her, she stared out the window and tried to discreetly wipe her mouth and stop blushing._

 

***

 

“Come, I shall send for coffee. I have Ethiopian beans. Bring your... _falafel_ to the living room.”

Darcy narrowed her eyes, “I thought you didn’t do import and export here?”

“We make most of our money exporting Vibranium,” T’Challa smiled, but Steve could see he was more interested in this completely normal woman that Steve had snuck out of Europe than he had been before Bucky's name left her lips.

“Still, It’s not like you do a lot of that, Vibranium is super hard to get, trust me, I’ve tried.” Darcy turned to Steve and rolled her eyes “Jane needed it for her component to the Einstein-Rosen Bridge, so she could hump Thor. But other than that,” she looked back at T’Challa, as if she hadn’t just talked about the, eh, _personal activities_ of the Prince of Asgard and his lady.

“Other than that, Wakanda stays out of just about everything, probably how the UN managed to get all the signatures so quickly for the Sokovia Accords.” Darcy mused, going quiet.

Steve saw she was lost in her thoughts now. It happened a lot on the car ride, she’d gotten an idea, stated something about it and gone silent for a few (blessed) minutes, either moving on, like he’d understood everything, or explaining it to him afterwards.

“What do you mean?” T’Challa asked politely, but Steve could see that Darcy was pushing it.

“Well, Wakanda is the richest country in the world, the only country with a substantial amount of Vibranium. You also had a completely different technological evolution, no Wakandian software can be hacked, believe me, I’ve tried that too, and all citizens have the best education. Amazing education, I am so totes jealous of your education! So a land that is so self sufficient, who used to have their borders closed, and is advanced like Wakanda, is dangerous, powerful and needs to be controlled.”

T’Challa was not smiling anymore, Steve thought he should intervene, but Darcy was rambling.

“Just like with the Avengers,” she continued, oblivious to the tension. “They are superhuman with basically unlimited funding, because of Stark. The government has tried to own all of them,” she waved at Steve. “First you because the USSR and American government made you built like a brick house, then paid your paycheck. Then Bruce Banner because he became the Hulk while working for General Ross. Then Iron Man came and his amazing charisma and lawyers and cheek made himself free policing, made sure the Iron Man suit was not given to the government or any other government. Through Shield the government thought they had _some_ semblance of control, then Steve fucked that up, Bucky escaped Hydra and the government freaked out when the Avengers went private. Because they had no control and all and the Avengers are superior humans.”

T’Challa no longer looked tense, but rather thoughtful, as Darcy continued.

“The only reason they managed to make the Accords, which I bet were hundreds of pages long so that they would have complete control and the Avengers would not have time to do anything about the parts they wanted to change." She rolled her eyes and made a sound of frustration. 

“They do it in politics _all_ the time, change things and add stupid and boring parts to waste time, then springs it on the opposition last minute so they have no time to prepare or fully follow what’s going on. It’s a complete dick move.

“But my point is, all the countries who signed the Accords did it so that they could get a piece of the Avengers, _and_ a relationship with Wakanda.”

There was complete silence for a few seconds while T’Challa took in the woman standing in front of him, out of breath and bright eyed after her epiphany.

“You have a keen sense of Politics, miss Lewis, I see your education was not too bad.” T’Challa smiled.

“I also did write my Masters on Superhero Policing, totally predicted that Iron Man and Captain America would not agree on how the government wanted to do it. Though I did think that registering identities of all mutants and other specially powered people would be a consequence of that so let’s pray it isn’t.”

Steve had to agree.

“So, coffee?” T’Challa asked, gesturing to the next room, “we have much to discuss.”

 

***

 

_“So what’s the plan?” Darcy asked when they had packed up all their stuff and wiped down the tiny apartment they’d been staying in._

_“We steal a car and drive to Nice.” James shrugged._

_“Just, steal a car and go?” Darcy asked, he shrugged again._

_“It’s not as if there are strict border controls within the EU.”_

_“Well, do you know how to steal a car?” She asked, then regretted it as she met his deadpan stare. “Of course you do…” She blushed and looked down, hesitated for a second before she looked back up again, raising an eyebrow at him._

_“Can you teach me?”_

_James smirked back._

_Goddamn this man turned her on._

 

***

 

T’Challa was much like Natasha, Steve came to realise when they sat together in the lining room. He asked Darcy questions, just casual enough to ease any suspicion, and just commanding enough to remind her that he was the ruler of this country and she was in his home.

It was a beautiful home. Much like Tony, T’Challa seemed to love walls made out of windows and having all rooms run on some kind of tech. The room they were in was brightly lit with simple design, and in the middle of the room the floor was sunk down into a huge pit covered with pillows, mats, green leaves and a low table in the middle. They sat at the table, legs crossed on a mat, with green grass and leaves covering it. Darcy was impaling her falafel on the plastic fork she’d been given and T’Challa was eating with his fingers, Steve had eaten his on the quinjet.

“How long ago did he propose?” T’Challa continued his interrogation, nodding to the ring on her finger.

“He didn’t,” Darcy smiled and started on the story she’d told Steve, with a little less innuendos now that she was speaking to royalty. Apparently she did have some reigns and filters. “But yeah, that was a couple of weeks ago, we haven’t been engaged for that long.” She frowned at her falafel and looked up at the two men.

“He was out buying some groceries when when I got an alert on my laptop, I was in the shower and I didn’t hear it, when I saw it, only a few minutes later, I was just going to text him but he’d sent me a text. Saying he’d been made and to stay inside and wait.” She blinked, eyes glassy, and Steve looked over at T’Challa.

“The news said he’d bombed the UN, but I _swear_ he didn’t, he was framed, because at the time of the UN-bombing he was at the apartment with me!” Darcy looked up at the king with big eyes, begging him to believe her.

“I know he was framed,” T’Challa said, calmly, “I found when I was trying to kill him.”

Darcy wipe the one tear that had managed to escape, “I’m sorry about your dad.”

“I am sorry about your Bucky,” T’Challa said, meeting Steve’s gaze over the table.

“But, he’s alive, right?! Bucky is alive!” Darcy stood, looking desperately between the two of them.

“Yeah, Darcy, Bucky’s alive,” Steve said, standing too, reaching out to her, wanting to calm her down.

“Then what does he mean?!” She asks Steve, and Steve knows this is it. His heart is in his throat.

“He’s in cryofreeze.”

Darcy’s hand comes up to cover her mouth, eyes big and tears streaming free.

He reaches out again, to comfort, maybe patting her back or leaving his hand on her shoulder, _something_.

He was too preoccupied by what he could do to make her feel better that he missed the warning signs. The way her eyes narrowed, the slight nostril flare. Suddenly she had dropped to a crouch, ducking under his outstretched arm and reaching in her boots. Steve was too shocked to react when the cold metal of her taser prongs are held against his cheek.

“Darcy-”

“You knew and you _didn’t tell me!!?”_ Her voice got a shrieks tone at the end of it, "you _assfuck_! You absolute _prick_ you, _ARGH!”_

And with that she pulled back slightly, moved her arm a few inches lower, and tasered him in the chest.

He felt electricity course through him, it stung, like Howard Stark’s machine, only it had one point of origin and spread its way through his body, instead of 28. He fell over and the air was knocked out of him.  

It was over quickly and Steve was on the floor, blinking the room into focus after squeezing his eyes too hard.

Darcy was on the floor next to him, kneeling with tears streaming down her face and the taser held loosely between her fingers, arms slack at her sides.

“I promised him,” she sobs, “I _promised_ him he’d never be under Hydra’s control again. _I promised_ him he’d never have to go back to the cold.” She dropped the taser on the floor and covered her face, trying to control her breathing.

T’Challa had moved too. He was standing behind Darcy, looking ready to intervene in case she attacked Steve again, Steve knew she wouldn’t.

“Hydra does not have him,” T’challa said once Darcy finished wiping her eyes, “we do.”

 

***

 

_“This one.” James stopped and pulled his cap down, gesturing with his other hand to the old and beat up Toyota Corolla._

_“Why?” She asked him._

_He cocked his head and studied her face, before he seemed to understand. She wanted to learn how to steal cars. Not just stealing a car, but which car to steal. She wanted to know everything._

_Because she was Darcy Lewis, she changed her major three times and has two bachelors and one masters. She wanted to know everything._

_“It’s discreet, easy to steal and the license plates are French.”_

_“How do I steal it?”_

_ “You won’t, I will. Then we will drive out to the countryside and you’ll get to try without the police 20 feet away.” He smirked and casually walked towards the car, walked around to the driver's side and within three seconds he was opening the door and getting in. Nobody paid attention to him and Darcy took their clue, acting like she knew he owned the car. He leaned over and winked at her before unlocking her door. She got in and dumped their bags in the backseat as he fiddled under the dashboard, then jammed a screwdriver into the ignition and started the car. _

_They drove off without a second glance towards the police._

_“Mind if I put on some music?” Darcy asked, a few minutes later, already going through her purse._

_“This car only has a cassette player.” James frowned at her, when she triumphantly dragged out her Tape-Aux-Converter._

_“That won’t be a problem, Jimmy.” She winked and inserted the white tape, connected it to her iPod and started messing with the radio to get the right frequency. James grunted._

_“What?”_

_“I don’t like it. Jimmy. Please don’t call me that, Doll.”_

_“What do you like to be called then,_ Stud _?” She smirked, he winked back._

 _“Stud ain’t as bad, but I- I would rather you call me Bucky.” It sounded like a question.  She studied his face and realised this was huge. Jame-_ Bucky _was recovering from amnesia. His identity was stolen and he was finding himself. He told her his name was James when they first met. It was the truth, it was also the least suspicious name in the English speaking world.  Now he was giving her Bucky. His true identity. He was opening up and letting her in._

 _“_ Bucky _,” she smiled, touched. “What do you we listen to the best road trip song?” Then she let ‘500 miles’ by the Proclaimers blast at full volume._

_“Jesus, what happened to music in the past 70 years?” He muttered._

_“Just wait, you’ll be singing along to this by the time we get to the border.”_

_“How long_ is _this song?!” Bucky asked in alarm._

_Darcy laughed and looked out the window, they were leaving the city and the beautiful view._

 

***

 

“Take me to him.” Darcy said, voice quivering but demanding. “To B- _Bucky_. _Please_ ,” she begged T’Challa, “I _have_ to see him.”

 

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I did a lot of research on Wakanda, it’s a fictional country located near Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya. I don’t know that much about African cultures other than what little I learned from people I have met who I've talked to about their cultures. Luckily most of them were from Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea so I was a little inspired by that. With the mats and the grass. And fun fact, they eat POPCORN with COFFEE <3 Didn't have enough time before Darcy demanded her Bucky to write it in there though.


	5. Operation: Happy-Hugging

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky teaches Darcy how to jimmy a car door.  
> Steve apologises, and Darcy has a plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to [Lara](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lara/pseuds/Lara) for helping me beta!  
> Sorry for the long wait, folks! Full disclaimer; I'm an unreliable updater, but I do my best to write when I got the time... which is why I usually post updates at 6AM :)

***

 

_ “Now feel around for the latch then pull it up.” Bucky said patiently. They were in the middle of a deserted country road, a little ways from civilisation. He was casually leaning his leather clad left arm on the roof of the Toyota Corolla and the other hand was on his hip. He looked very James Dean with his ray ban knockoffs white-shirt-leather-jacket combo it was entirely unfair that he looked this good in this heat.  The midday sun was hot on her neck, and she was sweating in her summer dress, the wind only a slight relief as she tried to focus on the task at hand.  _

_ Darcy wiggled the thin metal strip around until it caught on something, angling it so the little hook at the bottom of her jimmy was underneath the latch, she pulled and heard the satisfactory click of the door unlocking. She let out a surprised whoop of victory, looking up to meet Bucky’s eyes over the rim of his sunglasses she saw the glint of pride there. She tried the door handle and the door swung open. It worked!  _

_ She threw herself at Bucky, arms around his waist, and started jumping up and down while yelling “I did it, I did it!” and “Fuck you, Corolla!” over and over again.  _

_ He brought his arms around her and sort of bobbed with her jumps a little, smiling widely at her enthusiasm. _

_ She leaned back and smiled widely back, before giving the car the one fingered salute, before she became distracted by his muscled chest and arms and tried to tackle him to the ground.  _

_ “Wow, I can do grand theft auto now, for reals.” She kept smiling.  _

_ “You don’t really know how to steal a car until you’ve learned hotwiring,” he smirked. _

_ “Ah, come on, Bucky, let me cruise on the high from this accomplishment before you bring me down with another hour of failure!” She crossed her arms, under her boobs to properly show him the assets… hehe...  _ boob _ sets.  _

_ He looked down at her breasts for a beat before he met her eyes again. She smirked knowingly at him, thrilled she was not the only one distracted by the other.  _

_ “Well before we do that, you’ll have to jimmy this car in under a minute.” he shrugged and removed the jimmy from the door, clicking down the lock on the inside and shut the door again.  _

_ Her smirk fell.  _

_ “Damn you, Barnes. Give me that jimmy-jam.” _

_ He raised an eyebrow and held it out just out of her reach.  _

_ “Seriously, work with me here or Jimmy-Jam will be your new nickname.” _

 

***

 

T’Challa left Steve to take Darcy to Bucky alone. Steve guessed he had better things to do, like leading a country. 

He held the door open for Darcy as she entered. There was an eerily orange glow cast over the dark space, like streetlamps in abandoned parking lots. All the scientists and doctors had left the room and the only source of the lights were the glass screens with orange text, symbols and numbers… And the Cryo Chamber, windows frosted over, Bucky’ profile barely visible in the dim orange glow. 

Darcy stood in the doorway, visibly bracing herself before she stepped inside. There was a faint humming sound as the covers on the windows automatically started rising and the lights came on. Darcy blinked and made her way to the cryo-chamber, her hand touching the glass as she stared intently over Bucky. She instantly recoiled, removing her hand from the glass as if it was burned. Steve got it, the glass was cold, and tangible. Touching it just confirmed that everything was real. 

“His arm?” She asked him, without taking her eyes from Bucky. 

“Stark,” Steve explained, “Hydra made the Winter Soldier kill his parents.”

Darcy tentatively put her hand back on the glass, over his shoulder patch. 

“In 1991,” she whispered, placing her other hand over Bucky’s heart, her ring clinking against the glass, making a haunted sound through the quiet room. 

“You knew?” Steve asked. 

“You didn’t?” She countered, Steve glanced away. 

There was a moment of silence before she sighed and looked at him over her shoulder. 

“He had nightmares. His mind was repairing itself. Sometimes he’d tell me about happy memories. Memories of you, of Becca, his parents,” she smiled at Bucky’s frozen face and Steve could see the tears on her cheeks. “Most of the times though…” 

Steve grunted, understanding. 

She looked over Bucky, her brows furrowed before she looked back to Steve, dropping her hands and squaring her shoulders. He easily read the accusation in her eyes. 

“Why would you do this to him?” She asks, voice steady, like her stance, though Steve can see she’s only a few minutes away from breaking down again. He feels his chest tighten.

“It was his own choice.”

“Why?” She asks, and Steve can hear the sob threatening to burst out of her throat. He doesn’t want to look at her face, see the heartbreak there, so he looks at Bucky instead, at the frozen face, like the picture in the Hydra file. Steve wondered again if this was what he looked like when he was in the ice, and hoped that Bucky would remember less than he did. He remembered the cold, and he remembered being tired, and alone, like a nightmare you just couldn’t wake up from. It still had him waking up in cold sweat.  

Steve cleared his throat before answering. 

“He begged us to do it.”

He heard a sob escape Darcy and tore his eyes away from Bucky to look at her.

She had her arms wrapped around herself, as if gripping her shirt in her fists was keeping her together. 

“Why? Why would he?” She forced herself to take a deep breath before continuing, “why would he leave me and go back to _ this?!”  _

She starts hyperventilating, gasping for breath, and sinks to the floor. Steve helps steady her as she curls in on herself, bringing her knees up and putting her head between them as she tries to calm down. He takes it as a good sign that she doesn’t shake him off when he puts an arm around her, sitting himself down next to her. 

“He was captured,” Steve started hesitantly, leaving out the way he was caged like an animal, all limbs strapped down. “A man, the same man we later found out had framed him, he got Bucky alone for long enough to read him some trigger phrases. Bucky was the Winter Soldier again and broke out, fighting his way through and almost made it off in a chopper. I dragged it back down, made him hit his head. I had to fish him out of the water at the bottom of the building.” She was breathing steadier now, listening to him. 

“I guess hitting his head made him come back to himself. But when we were finally done fighting, he told he he didn’t wanna be a liability.”

“You told him he wasn’t, right?” She asked, voice small but full of passion. 

“Of course, but he was adamant that he had to go back under until we were sure no one could trigger him.” 

“How did he get triggered? How did that man know what the triggers were?”

“Bucky said he read them from a red book. Hydra used to bring it out before every mission, at the end of every programming.”

Darcy’s eyes widened as she looked at him, “the red book? The red book with the black star?” 

Steve frowned, “yes, how did you know about that?” 

“Bucky told me about it,” she looked back up at the man she loved, the man they both loved, and slumped against Steve’s chest, sighing with exhaustion. “Most his nightmares were about that book, we just didn’t know it was real until now.”

 

***

 

_ They left Florence in a Toyota Corolla and arrived in France in a Honda Accord. Darcy was really living the good life. _

_ They make it to Nice at around midnight, both in high spirits from a nice day in the car. They’d picked up a mountain of snacks at the Carrefour, a whole bag full of marsbars and winegums. A whole reusable bag full. Bucky sure had a sweet tooth. The car ended up smelling like diabetes after hours of driving and the faulty AC.  _

_ The scenery outside their window had been beautiful. Sunny fields and picturesque farms and cottages. Some well kept and habited and others taken over by nature, white chalked walls barely visible behind layers of ivy and bellflowers.  _

_ The conversations they’d had were flirty and filled with mirth. She'd talked about some of the shenanigans Jane had gotten them into over the years, even tried to tally up how many in-lab explosions she’d dealt with. He’d mentioned some of his memories of Steve from when he was a hundred pounds soaking wet. Darcy had some trouble imagining Captain America as a skinny asthmatic, only ever having seen the pictures of a man who could easily compete with Thor for blond muscle champ. Thor would win, of course, but Steve Rogers was a shoe-in for second place. That dorito meme that had started when someone tweeted a pic of a dorito being held up in the middle of a battle and fitting Cap’s shoulder to waist ratio perfectly as he held off a doombot, had given her life. She’d shown Bucky the many dorito meme pics she’d saved on her iPad, and his laughter helped distract her from the fact that she was sweaty and icky and restless.  _

_ She was a little tired when it started nearing 1AM and was relieved when Bucky took off from the main road, wanting to get a room in a motel and sleep for days. Unfortunately Europe was not as well equipped with roadside motels as America.  _

_ Bucky switched off the headlights and turned down a smaller road, making her frown. Why did he turn the headlights off and how the fuck could he see where he’s driving without them?! _

_ “We’re here,” Bucky grunted as he killed the engine and let the car roll silently underneath a tree, halting the car with the handbrake.  _

_ Darcy was distracted by the cool style of his parking that she didn’t even ask him where ‘ _ here’ _ was. It was  _ that _ cool. Darcy might be a stellar driver, but she could never have made that parking spot without either lights nor engine. So. Cool. Damn. How did he even see that spot without the headlights?  _

_ “Do you have, like, improved night vision or something?” She asked as he glared onto what she thought might be a bush, outside her window. He shrugged in answer and motioned for her to shut up. She thought.  _ Her _ night vision was not improved.  _

_ He leaned towards her and whispered; “stay put, I’ll be back,” close enough that his breath tickled her cheek. _

_ “Alright, terminator,” she muttered, he didn't get the reference. Instead of answering he made a shushing noise and pressed a gun into her hand, before leaning back and melting into the night.  _

_ “Bucky!” she whispered, squinting out into the darkness, seeing nothing. _

_ She fumbled with the gun, feeling the weight of it, it had a silencer. She immediately decided that calling out for Bucky was not a good idea.  _

_ She weighed her options. She could either stay here or she could follow him into the darkness. She listened intently, squishing her eyes shut and counting to ten before opening them, only seeing slightly better.  _

_ She still saw nothing. She counted to ten again, before she opened her bag, looting around as quietly as possible until she found her taser and her trusty, old iPod. The one she’d upgraded herself so many times that the only thing that remained from the original model was the navigation wheel. Making it difficult for anyone but her to use it.  _

_ She pulled up the GPS map, blinking at the bright screen, and waited for her iPod to piggyback on the closest GPS transmitter. The map blinked into focus before her eyes could.  She was overwhelmed by how fast it went. That meant there was an excellent GPS transmitter very close by. 58 meters into the bush to be exact, where there was a farm according to the map.  _

_ She turned off the screen, looking into the bush and seeing less than she did before she blinded herself with the screen.  _

_ “Fuck.” _

_ She closed her eyes again, patiently counting to 60 while listening for any sound at all. Anything that wasn’t bats, owls or the wind rustling the leaves.  _

_ After a minute she could hear a faint thump, at least she thought she heard it, but it could just as well have been her overactive imagination.  _

_ “Fuck it,” she muttered, gripped the gun in one hand and her taser in the other, before she crawled out of the car window. A chorus of swear words on repeat in her head that sounded oddly like Clint when he was late for work.  _

_ She stayed close to the ground and made her way through the bushes, making a lot more noise than Bucky had, until she got to a low stone wall. _

_ Here goes nothing. _

_ She hoisted herself up in the wall and laid herself flat on her stomach on top of it, peering down to check for booby traps on the other side, but all she could see was darkness. She let her leg down, feeling the ground before rolling off and scampering along to wall over to a copse of trees. Why did she think this was a good idea? _

_ She heard noises coming from the big building, the barn she guessed, and hunched so she was on height with the wall and followed it until she was close enough to make out the sounds.  _

_ Scuffles, meat hitting metal, low grunts and choking sounds. She guessed Bucky was fighting, and was debating whether to sneak back to the car and let him deal or assist him with her limited (read: zero) fighting expertise. _

_ The decision was made for her when a dude came sailing through the open door, hit the ground rolling, and came to a stop about five feet in front of her.  _

_ He groaned and sat up, staring right at where she was hunched over, she let out a little squeak before pulling the trigger and watching as 50 000 volts shot through him, enough to momentarily stun and distract him as she clobbered him on the head with the butt of her gun.   _

_ He dropped back on the ground and she forced herself to take a deep breath, checking to see that nobody had noticed her outside.  _

_ She quickly looted his unconscious form, finding zip ties and handcuffs in one pocket, and quickly zipped his hands together before she cuffed his ankles. If this dude knew how to break out of zip ties then at least it would be hard to run.  _

_ She then stuffed his hat into his mouth and fumbled in her bag for her duct tape, taping it around his head so that he couldn't just spit the gag out.  _

_ She then recovered his walkie, ID and phone, taking out his Sim Card and battery (blessing him for not using an iPhone) before shoving the phone into her bag with the ID.  _

_ She then crept to the door the man had been thrown out of and peered around the doorframe.  _

_ Bucky was busy punching this one dude really hard in the face, and Darcy heard the nose break, a sickening crack that echoed in the, now silent, barn.  _

_ She stood and slipped in, looking at the bodies littered on the floor, only looking up when she heard a gun cock.  _

_ “Jesus Fucking Christ,” Bucky spit out as he clicked the safety back on, aiming the gun away from her face. “What the fuck are you doing here?” He sounded really mad. Well fuck him, because she was mad first. _

_ “What the fuck are  _ you  _ doing here?!” She asked him right back and crossed her arms over her chest.  _

_ He gave her a look that said he was not going to have this conversation right here and now, and Darcy was just about to demand that they did just that when she the wallow in her hand came to life and asked for a status update. She spun around. Another man was running towards her at full speed from the farm house. She reacted on instinct, raising her hand and pulling the trigger. Except it wasn't a taser she was firing. She’d already used the charge on the other dude and put it back in her purse. What she was shooting now was a gun.  _

_ Except nothing happened. She blinked and pulled the trigger again, still nothing, and the man was close enough now to make a grab for her so she was just about to throw the gun in his face for all the good that did her, when she heard the bang she’d been expecting and felt a sting on her cheek before the man dropped dead in front of her.  _

_ She raised her left hand to her cheek and felt wetness there, she knew it was blood.  _

_ Spinning around to look at Bucky she saw his gun was raised, having saved her ass yet again.  _

_ She opened her mouth to express her gratitude when he stopped, dropped, and rolled, grabbing a backpack mid tumble and jumping up next to her, grabbing her arm. _

_ “Run.” _

_ Darcy ran. A sprint to the wall, Bucky jumped it like a hurdle and she did an awkward, but efficient, roll over it a second after him. He grabbed her hand again, pulling her with him back to the car and picked her up like she weighed nothing  before sliding her feet effortlessly in through her window. She just managed to grab onto the ski box rig, before he let go and slid over the hood to get to his side.  _

_ She slid into the car and struggled with her seatbelt as he started the engine, driving away without the headlights on, agitated and stony faced.  _

_ Darcy looked away, staying silent, thinking up a way to explain herself, before she remembered that she had just as good a reason to be pissed as he did. Maybe even more. _

_ Who the fuck leaves a damsel in a distressing situation to battle over a dozen jack booted dudes in a barn?! _

_ “You left the safety on,” he snaps when they hit a road with street lamps. She can see his features in the dim orange light whenever they pass under one.  _

_ She glances at the gun he gave her, a sleek silver thing with a silencer and a black leather grip. _

_ “Dude, I have never fired a gun, I don’t even know how to remove the safety.” _

_ She looked back up at him and he glanced at her with distress. Like she was cray cray for going 24 years without firing a gun.  _

_ “So leaving me in a car, all alone, with no idea what the fuck you were doing, with a gun I can't even use, is a fucking stupid idea. Don’t ever pull that shit again!” She fixed his profile with a glare, feeling the anger surge through her, mixed with the pride of not crying or shrieking.  _

_ “I won’t.” He promised her, after a moment of silence, and turned off the road and drove on an old, overgrown country road, towards one of the abandoned cottages they’d seen earlier, probably.  _

_ “As long as you promise to stay put when I tell you to stay put.” _

_ She made no such promises.  _

 

*** 

 

“Steve?” Darcy asked. Steve looked up from the screen next to the Cryo Chamber. Darcy had fallen asleep after hours of silently staring at Bucky. In the end she had curled up next to Steve and slumbered with her head in his lap. Steve had stayed there. Reading up on the charts and screens, his serum enhanced brain understanding more as he read. It had been hours until she’d stirred. 

“Yeah, Darcy?”

“Why did you wait so long before you told me?” 

Steve thought about it. How his pettiness has kept him from divulging that bit of information. Especially since he just wanted something to himself. Some proof that Darcy didn’t know everything about  _ his _ Bucky. But Bucky wasn’t just his anymore.

“I was selfish. I was jealous that you’d had him all to yourself for the past two years. And I was angry that you didn’t bring him back to me. Bring him home.” Steve admitted, “and I am sorry for that, Darcy.”

It felt like a weight was lifted off his shoulders. 

“I understand, he was  _ your _ Bucky first,” she smiled weakly to him, “it is very easy to love him.”

Steve frowned, she was scrutinizing his face and had apparently found what she needed, because she sighed and rubbed her temples, then changed her expression entirely. Where she’d looked lost and confused, there was now focus and calm.

“I know what we need to do. Get that book and break his programming.” 

 

***

 

_ It turns out that Bucky’s reason for storming the barn was because it was a small Hydra safe house, with loads of go bags, which meant loads of cash. He’d planned on sneaking in, grabbing a bag or two, then sneaking out. Unfortunately, since Captain America had foiled Hydra’s coming out party, loads of Hydra agents had gone into hiding and the safe house had been full.  _

_ He’d managed to get a bag though, a bag filled with guns, ammo, and money.  _

_ The dusty little cottage was incredibly cosy, and the moldy smell was not as bad as Darcy had feared. Maybe because there was not that much woodwork, furniture, or any textiles at all. There was a big stone bench that Bucky spread out the contents of their packs on and a chair by the cast iron, woodburning stove.  _

_ Bucky was still tense, his motions full of purpose and his face emotionless. It was kind of creepy, like Bucky wasn’t there anymore and the Winter Soldier had taken over.  _

_ “Hey,” she tried to gain his attention. He didn’t even look up. _

_ “Grumpy!” She snapped her fingers in front of his face, making him look up at her. _

_ “I’m okay,” she assured him, he frowned at her. “We’re both alright. No damage done.” She spread her arms out and spun in a circle so he could look over her and see there were no injuries. He’d already done a quick check up but she knew from Clint and Thor that fighting types liked continued visual confirmation that everything was fine.  _

_ When he still didn’t say anything, but his eyes lingered on her left cheek. She’d cleaned up the little cut there from the passing bullet, it didn't look like it would even leave a scar. The bleeding had been misleading. And she told him as much as she walked up to him, taking his hands off the table and placing herself in the space between it and him.  _

_ “I’m going to hug you now,” she warned him and slowly embraced him around the middle, like she’d done only hours before. She hoped to get some of the playfulness from this afternoon back. At least an emotion other than anger, confusion and frustration.  _

_ “Don’t be a jerk, hug me back,” she demanded after a few seconds of him pretending to be a statue. He hesitantly let his arms wrap around her, bringing her a little closer. She felt the tension seep out of him as he pulled her tighter and let his cheek fall to her hair. _

_ “See? We’re okay. Just a little tired. Why don’t we get in a little shut-eye and we’ll be right as rain tomorrow!” She smiled into his chest and he gave her a little squeeze and exhaled. _

_ “I’ll check the perimeter, put up some traps and alarms, why don’t you fix the bed.” he nodded to the bag with his clothes in and smirked at her. This one-eighty in his mood made her blink up at him before she let go, nodded and made her way to the bag.  _

_ She was still struggling with the pump for the air mattress when he came back 10 minutes later, and he refused to help her. He just smirked when she told him either he did it, or there would be no mattress, before he laid down next to the chair and pulled a blanket over himself. _

_ Damn you Bucky Barnes. _

 

_ *** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Change the lyrics, peeps. The man don't have no plan, but the woman does!  
> Thank you all for your comments! They do encourage me to keep writing!


	6. Operation: Persuasion (part i)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bonding and eating... both in 2016 and 2014.
> 
> Oh, and Steve and Bucky are both ass men :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Lara for betaing and kicking my butt through Nano (I jumped ship for the week there btw, too much exam work!) But I thought I would post this and finish chapter 7 at the beginning of december :)  
> As usual; sorry for leaving this so long, but, yah know, life happens!

Steve blinked at Darcy. The way she’d stated the impossible as the easiest thing in the world with such confidence was slightly intimidating.

“Who’s got it?”

“I think Tony has it, if not then General Ross.”

“Shit, I sure hope General Ross doesn’t have it.”

Steve nodded in agreement. Darcy was pacing back and forth in front of Bucky.

“If General Ross does have it, I would know. I’ve spent the past few days hacking away, and boy am I excited to to try out the Wakandian tech,” she trailed off and looked at the screens surrounding her with longing.

“But anyway,” she shook her head, getting back on track, “I have been keeping an eye on General Ross and his stuff and he hasn't added any new projects, other than ‘up all night to get Bucky,’ which means he doesn’t have it.”

“It could have been a secret project?”

“Nah, then there would have been more resistance to my hacking and a bigger pieces of data would be hidden. No he definitely doesn’t have it. If he did then he’d have started working on it right away. He really wants to control all superheroes so that book would have been his biggest win since forever.”

“Then Tony has it.” Steve frowned, thinking of how he’d nearly killed the man.

“Good, then this is much easier.”

“How is it easier? We didn’t exactly have a friendly parting. I don’t think I can just ask him to give it to me.”

“That’s why you will not be asking for it.” Darcy interrupted. “And it’s not as if I was planning on _asking_ for it either.”

“Then what’s your plan?”

“ _I’ll_ be the one getting it,” She smiles, a smile so close to the one Natasha has when she’s talking to her target right before she does her roundhouse kick. Steve feels the hair on the back of his neck rise and for the first time since he met her, Steve Rogers fears Darcy Lewis. “With political science and a dash of Vibranium.”

And with that she turned around and walked towards the door. Finally regaining a little more of that spark she’d had before she saw Bucky.

“Well, then I guess there is just one big thing we need to sort out to get this show on the road.” Darcy said, rubbing her hands together, as if it was the easiest thing in the world. “We gotta get T’Challa to give me Vibranium worth 4 million dollars. Should be easy right?”

_***_

_It was barely light outside when she woke. After a good 15 minutes of struggling with the air mattress she’d finally gotten it inflated and fell onto it, thoroughly exhausted. Now though, it couldn’t be more than two hours later and she was woke with the feeling that something was off._

_Glancing over at Bucky, seeing his form still huddled under the blanket, breathing steady, she concluded that the only off thing about waking now was that it was five o’clock in the morning._

_She was just about to doze off again when she heard it._

_There was a whimper, a distinct whimper, followed by some rustling of the blanket._

_She opens her eyes wide to look over at Bucky again, turning onto her side to see him better. He’s curled in on himself and shaking, his leg spasms slightly every now and then. Darcy has a hysterical thought for a second, that Bucky is dreaming he’s a dog, begging for food at the table and thumping his leg when someone pets him, like her grandma’s dog used to do. Only for a second though, because the spasms spread from his leg to the rest of his body, and he’s shaking his head, muttering ‘no’ over and over._

_Darcy sits up to try and look at his face, and sees it contorted with pain, his arm starts buzzing, recalibrating, the plates moving frantically, like he’s lost control. She’s half way out of bed when her brain catches up to her body and she freezes, weighing her options._

_She wants to wake him up. He’s clearly having a horrible nightmare, but she is unsure whether you’re supposed to wake people up from nightmares, maybe it was just sleepwalkers you had to let sleep? She’s too tired to remember and feels handicapped without google, but there are no signals for miles that she can piggyback on. Bucky stills, and Darcy can hear her own breath, coming out much harder than she expected, in the sudden silence._

_“Bucky?” She whispers, then clears her throat and tries again a little louder after not getting a reaction. “Bucky?”_

_He starts muttering. It’s a whole mixture of American, Russian, and what sounds like Italian, and maybe even French? It creeps her the fuck out, and she is about to get up and walk over to him, but in the process she disturbs the curtains behind her, splitting them for a second and letting a beam of moonlight in that reflects off his arm. She pauses, then goes back to her own bed. She’s not stupid. She might not have the best track record when it comes to safety, but she knew from experience that waking people was not always the best option. Jane had the habit of sitting up so fast that she’s headbutted Darcy more than once, While Eric, after his time with Loki, often had nightmares that had him lashing out at whatever woke him, no matter if it was his cat, an intern or an alarm clock._

_There was no way in hell she was going to put a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, when one split-second of confusion could result in rather severe injuries. She didn’t fancy getting his metal fingers wrapped around her throat or being knocked across the room. She might have little self perseverance, or whatever, but she is not suicidal._

_She stays awake in her bed waiting for the nightmares to stop, the first lights of dawn coming in before he’s finally calm for longer than a minute. Darcy feels her body go lax as she takes a deep breath, and finally succumbs to sleep again._

**

Darcy gets the Vibranium, and Steve is honestly impressed.

It took her an hour of banter and discussions around Wakanda’s (lack of) trade history, and Steve was barely able to get a comment in, not having enough knowledge of the 70 years of politics he missed. With a smile, a handshake, some popcorn, and two cups of the strongest, sweetest coffee he’d ever had the pleasure of drinking, Darcy makes her way back to her room to pack her bags while T’Challa makes the arrangements. Darcy’s already out of the room when when Steve turns to T’Challa who is smiling at him.

“Smart one, that one.”

Steve glances to the doorway and back to the King.

“She is,” he agrees, then; “she’d do anything for Bucky.”

“Then Mr. Barnes is a lucky guy.”

Steve frowns down at his little cup, setting it down on the mat and brushing the sweetbread crumbs off his lap as he stood up.

 “Sure,” Steve sighs, having decided to stay cautious until Bucky told him she made him happy. He looks out at the foggy jungle, trying not to dwell too much on Bucky’s love life. A flock of colourful birds flies out of a nearby tree, around the great Panther statue and back into the canopy. Steve tears his eyes away from the statue, trying not to compare it to the Starks’ many monuments to themselves, reminding himself that it was older than even him.

T’Challa meets his eyes with a knowing look, Steve is a bit taken aback with the way they twinkled, his ears warming slightly under his warm gaze.

“You will find your luck, too,” T'Challa says, nodding and exiting the room. Steve stands staring after him, wondering what he’d meant. Was it that obvious that he was lonely? Did T’Challa think he was falling for Darcy? Did he think he had feelings for Bucky or Sam or Natasha or him? Maybe he even knew about the (slightly awkward) kiss between him and Sharon, Steve wouldn’t put it past him. Deciding it wasn’t important, Steve followed after T’Challa out of the room, and made his way to the labs.

“It’s alright, Bucky,” Steve paused when his enhanced hearing could just about make out Darcy’s voice coming from the lab, feeling slightly guilty for eavesdropping, but unable to help himself, Steve snuck closer, peering around the corner. He could just about make out the cryochamber, the glow from it only blocked by Darcy’s form standing in front of it, the light making the curly hair, poking out of her braid, light up like a halo.  

“Steve’s here, alright? He’ll help, and I know I can do this, like I did in Rome on our anniversary, and sure you aren’t here to growl at my accent, or kick my ass into gear, but Steve is. He’ll do anything to get you back, we both will, so I know you can’t hear me, Bucky, but I need you to know that we’re coming back, we’re getting you outta there, and you’ll never ever have to go back. And after this is all over, we’ll move somewhere warm, with plenty of sun for me to complain about, and a huge bathtub you can soak in after a bad night.”

Steve suddenly felt really embarrassed, both for his doubts in Darcy, his jealousy of her closeness with _his_ Bucky, but also because here he was, listening in on a rather private moment. His Ma would have his hide had she known how his manners had slipped in this century.

 _Then again I rather think she’d understand,_ Steve thought, _well, in most cases, perhaps not this._

He stealthily made his way back the way he’d come, intent on packing up his few belongings, while ignoring the soft sniffs and muffled sobs he could hear from Darcy.

*

_Bucky isn’t there when Darcy wakes the next morning, and she wearily cleans herself up as best she can in the dark, dusty space, hoping they’ll go somewhere with running water and electricity next. After a rather uncomfortable trip to the bathroom (read: the bushes a little off the trail) Darcy walks back to the little house, rooting around in her bag for her hand sanitizer. She looks up at the house and sees the door ajar and immediately falls to the ground, blood pumping in her ears as she rolls to the car, trying not to panic even though she swears she closed the door before she left. She’s flat on her stomach, and about to inch her way  under the car when she hears a voice._

_“Good reflexes, terrible stealth.”_

_Darcy sighs in relief, letting her body go slack on the ground as Bucky’s smirking face appears over her, sideways with his hair covering half his face. She rolls onto her back and does a sit-up (ignoring Bucky’s huff of laughter at her weak abdominals) and try to dust herself off as best as possible, regretting putting on the last clean sundress she had now that it was covered in dirt and grass._

_“Any_ constructive _criticisms for your young padawan?” Darcy grumbles, taking the bag he holds out for her, only partially softening once she was the coffee and pastries inside._

_Bucky, who clearly hadn’t seen Star Wars, didn’t bother asking her what a padawan was, but simply retrieved the bags from the little house instead. “Next time; keep your eyes open before you’re five paces from the target.” Was all he advised, and Darcy who felt it fitting that he had to carry her bags into the car as well, started devouring her breakfast as she watched him do just that._

_They sit together on the hood of the car, eating in silence, only broken after they’re done and Bucky sighs, closing his eyes and standing completely still, as if taking in the moment. And Darcy will let him have this moment of tranquility, let him remember the sounds of morning birds, the smell of dewy grass and coffee, and the morning sun warming his face._

_She doesn’t bring up the nightmare, neither does he so she’s going to go against her instinct and not mention it at all. Not this time anyway._

_Not with his handsome face relaxed and worry-free for a few seconds._

_“We’ll come back here tomorrow, Hydra might not check this place out at all, but if they do, they’ll do it around noon today, it’s best to circle back and hide where they least expect us to.”_

_“Sure,” Darcy nods, following his logic, “can we please go somewhere with a shower tonight though?”_

_**_

_“_ I don’t mind my men pudgy,” Darcy shrugs as she dips another hand full of fries in her milkshake, before shoving them into her mouth. They’d landed in the States a few hours ago and driven out of Texas ever since. Texas seemed to last forever.

“Not that he is, though.” Darcy, clarified after she’s swallowed the fries, “pudgy, I mean. Jesus, whatever serum they pumped him full of made all the food go to his biceps and abs and that shit is just so fucking unfair, because guess who’s eating all that food _with_ him!” She gestures wildly, pointing dramatically at herself. “I mean look at this shit, this is just unfair… All I have to do is _look_ at pie and gain a pound,” She moped, shirt pulled up to expose the tiny rolls that came with sitting hunched over in a tiny booth, then she dipped and stuffed another handful of fries into her mouth.

“You’re not fat?” Steve said, confused by these women and their unattainable 21st century body ideals.

“Thank you for sounding so certain, Stevie, luckily Bucky told me about your hopelessness with women, so I’ll take your uncertainty about my Schrödinger’s fat as a compliment... Most of the food went to my tits and ass anyway.” She pulled down her shirt and crossed her arms angrily over her chest, voice full of bitterness. Steve let his eyes slide down to her chest, then past the edge of the table at her ass for a second.  

“Are you checking me out?”

“No, ma’am.” Steve lied and blushed as he looked away, pretending that the abandoned parking lot was incredibly interesting. Darcy laughed into her milkshake before she stuffs another load of dairy covered fries into her mouth.

“Isn’a s’if I care,” she chewed furiously and swallowed, concentrating on dipping another bouquet of fries in her milkshake. “Buck’ll love me no matter what size I am, and he’s all about the ass anyway.” She shrugged and stuffed the fries in her mouth, Steve laughed.

 _Bucky’s got a nice ass, so does Sam... and Natasha,_ he caught himself thinking, blushing slightly and looking down at his food. Steve thought all butts were nice in general, so he guessed he was all about the ass too.

***

_Bucky took mercy on her and got them a room at a little motel-like place, unfortunately it was one of those places with a common bathroom, but Darcy would take what she could get._

_“We gotta do laundry tomorrow,” Darcy commented idly, watching the waves crash in on the beach. She was lounging on a towel Bucky had procured somewhere, wearing the last clean outfit she had, pale legs slathered in sunscreen as said clothes were on the shorter side. At least she didn’t stick out, like Bucky, who sat next to her on what looked like a phone, wearing a hoodie, jeans and ass-kicking-boots._

_“Ok,” Bucky agreed._

_They fell into silence again._

_“At least take your shoes off,” Darcy tried, again._

_“No.”_

_“Fine, but I can’t watch you sweat through those clothes.”_

_“I’m not, I like the heat.” Something in his voice made her drop it._

_“Do you at least want an ice cream?”_

_Bucky is about to decline, when Darcy just rolls her eyes and stands up, walking over to the little ice cream stand at the edge of the beach._

_She looks at the many flavours, and is about to get him vanilla when she pauses. If there was one thing she’d noticed,  it was that Bucky loved food. He ate constantly, and varied. Even just after a couple days on the run, he’d always opted for the newest options, and though she’d spent most of the car ride here eating the same candybars, he’d rarely eaten the same thing twice._

_And she understood, really, if she’d grown up during the Great Depression and then been thrown into a world  of unnatural flavours, she’d probably take advantage too. Maybe it was more to it though. She remembered the small boot camp Jane had complained about suffering through a short while after Darcy had left her. Jane had been given meals at strict times, in between exercises, it must be the same for Bucky. Having Hydra feed him army rations._

Or, _a horrible thought struck her,_ maybe they didn’t feed him at all? _IV’s, those calorie pills for new moms without enough body fat to breast feed, scraps, perhaps?_

_“Madame?”  The ice cream vendor asked, and she looked up at the menu again, trying to push the depressing thoughts out of her mind._

_“Oui, eh, je vous drais deux glace, avec, eh, deux…”_

_“Scoops?” The man smiled. “My english is little, but tourists.” he explained, waving an arm out towards the beach._

_“Thanks, two icecreams, one with lemon and raspberries, one in the big chocolate cone with,” she looked at the menu for some weird flavours, “the black, eh noir, one and dark chocolate.”_

_The man smiled and started scooping, talking broken english to her, but from what she could piece together he thought she was Swedish because she ordered the black ice cream. Apparently salty liquorice was a popular choice among the Scandinavian tourists, and judging by the pale people here, there were a lot of them._

_“Here,” she handed the monstrosity of a cone over to Bucky, plopping down on the towel next to him._

_“Thank you.”_

_They sat in silence, licking their ice creams, Darcy tried not to stare as some of the black ice cream melted over Bucky’s fingers and he stuck said fingers in his mouth to lick it off. Fuck that. He’s too hot to be legal._

_He met her eyes and raised an eyebrow, having caught her staring at his lips for a little too long. She cleared her throat, almost choking on her own spit, “any plans for tonight?”_

_Bucky frowned slightly and passed the phone-looking thing over to her. It was a small screen displaying the house they’d been in the night before._

_“You placed surveillance?”_

_Bucky gave her a deadpan look._

_“Sorry, of course you did. Have they been there yet?”_

_“Two of them came at around two pm, they left no traps that I’m aware of, we should return there tonight.”_

_“Nooo,” Darcy whined, “but I just took a shower, I was planning on going swimming after the ice cream!”_

_“Then don’t swim.”_

_“Fine.” She huffed. She ate the rest of her ice cream in silence._

_“For dinner,” Bucky started hesitantly, after he’d demolished the ice cream cone, yucky liquorice and all, “we could eat…”_

_It was Darcy’s turn to give him a deadpan look._

_“Out. We could go out. Eat at a restaurant.” Bucky smiled at her. Damn, either he really wanted some great food, or he was kinda asking her out._

_“Like a date?” Darcy teased. Well, half-way teased. Actually she was just straight up asking, but the tone was light._

_“I- yes?” Bucky looked hesitant, like he wanted to take it back. Darcy grinned at him._

_“Coolio, I don’t have any fancy clean clothes though.”_

_“You don’t need to get dolled up.” He quickly assured her, looking at the sandy corner of the towel, as if he wanted to fidget with it._

_“It would be nice though, maybe for another time,” She smiled, he looked up at her, a small grin spreading over his face and she could swear he was a little pinker on his cheeks. She hoped he’d smile like that more._

_“Yeah?” he asked, sounding both relieved and hopeful._

_“Yeah,” she agreed, feeling her own face grow hot as she met his eyes. “You got anywhere in mind?”_

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! 
> 
> ((I have also managed to misplace/delete/overwrite? a whole 3k of chapter 7 :(:( So wish me good luck finding that! :'( pity me!))

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Leave a comment if you want :)   
> As always I am [foreverdrunkatheart](http://www.foreverdrunkatheart.tumblr.com) and [hannahsfandos](http://www.hannahsfandos.tumblr.com) on tumblr, come fangirl with me!


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